SNA (Tokyo) — On October 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in three separate cases that Japan Post illegally discriminated against its contingent employees in comparison with its regular staff. At first glance, this seemed a victory for workers that will raise all boats, but a closer look suggests it was part of a design to sink all boats.

The court ordered the company to grant the same dependents allowance, housing allowance, continuous service award, year-end work allowance, New Years pay, summer/winter leave, and sick pay to irregular employees as to regular (seishain) employees.

The plaintiffs filed the three cases in Tokyo, Osaka, and Saga prefectures, based on Article 20 of the Labor Contract Act (currently moved to Article 8 of the Act on Improvement of Employment Management for Part-Time Workers).

The regulation prohibits unreasonable discrimination in working conditions between regular and irregular employees (including part-timers, those on fixed-term employment, and dispatch agency workers), with due consideration given to work duties, potential for transfers, level of responsibility, and other circumstances.

To determine if a discrepancy is unreasonable, the judge must consider differences in each benefit’s structure, purpose, and the relevant work duties. Conventional wisdom has it that it’s reasonable to pay a regular but not an irregular employee a housing allowance since the former but not the latter is assumed to be required to move house anywhere in the country in the event of a transfer, with the associated costs of moving.

However, in this case the Supreme Court noted that some of the Japan Post seishain also faced no risk of such a major transfer and concluded that irregular employees should get the same housing allowance, regardless of differences in work duties.

The principle known as same work, same pay (doitsu rodo doitsu chingin) played a leading role in the touted “workplace reforms,” which upon closer inspection turned out mostly to be further attacks on the working class.

When I took my first labor law class thirty years ago, contingent work was a peripheral issue, with little ink spilled on the issue in labor law texts. But over the next three decades, Japan became a nation of precarious employment. Workers on contingent employment made up 37.2% of the workplace as of last February, according to a study by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. This figure jumps when looking at female workers, and it jumps again for foreign workers (estimated by my union at over 90%).

Who could oppose the principle of same work for the same pay? Many workers are driven into contingent work. My friends in that situation complain bitterly about the unfairness of earning less despite the same workload and responsibilities. They are right to be mad, but I cannot feel as they do when they direct their anger towards the seishain who are treated advantageously.

It’s the wrong target: Look to the management and the government that took it upon themselves to create these disparities in the first place.

I often hear female activists attack both gender and irregular employment discrimination. They feel that no matter how incompetent a man is, he will become a seishain and then receive preferential treatment. Some women even call for lowering the work conditions of incompetent regular employees who benefit from such advantaged status.

Such calls must be music to the ears of employers and managers, who nod and smile in agreement: Yes, indeed, we understand your frustration. Those on lifetime employment are being treated disproportionately better than their ability. Let’s correct the discrepancy.

In fact, this is what employers are doing in real time in order to comply with the principle of same work, same pay. These pretty words, but they only portend worse conditions for workers on regular employment as well as the reduction of steady, regular employment opportunities.

It’s easy to imagine that the original purpose of the government and the business community’s policies was to lower the conditions of the privileged workers by a large margin under the guise of achieving equality, while recognizing a few minor allowances for those on contingent employment.

Meanwhile, we the naïve people imagine that our rulers are fighting to improve things for the little guy or gal. Corporations move faster than workers and are already pouncing on the opportunity that has been afforded to them.

In fact, Japan Post group responded to the verdict by eliminating the housing allowance its group companies paid to about 5,000 regular workers not subject to transfer. The allowance was as much as ¥27,000 (US$232) a month for renters and up to ¥7,200 (US$62) a month for those in the first five years after home purchase. The Japan Postal Group Union (JPGU) protested this move, but ultimately agreed to a phased reduction over ten years, with ultimate elimination.

The employer must be confident that it can continue to placate the labor unions. After the housing allowance attack, it proposed a new plan to the union for other allowances. It wants to reduce the number of paid leave days in summer and winter granted to regular employees from three to one, while raising the number for fixed-term employees from zero to one. This clearly represents the overall degradation of benefits for employees.

Japan Post is not the only corporation abusing the same work, same pay principle by simply lowering the top to meet the bottom. Several firms have already announced reductions or eliminations of various allowances paid to seishain.

The way that the slogan of rectifying disparities can be used to lower conditions for all workers sends a cold shiver down my spine.

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